Focus on health, the weight loss will follow

Change just one thing and lose weight

Is your weight stuck at a certain number on the scale – or worse, slowly creeping up? You know that it’s time to make some changes but you don’t want to do anything really drastic. The good news is that you don’t have to.

A few weeks ago I wrote a post about 50 small tips for losing weight. That article turned out to be really popular so I decided to take the same theme a bit further and actually make some calculations on how you can change just one thing – and get great results.

Here’s a list of three things you can easily change in your life, and lose weight:

1. Exercise 15 minutes more a day

Walk, run, jump, go to gym… whatever. Just add 15 minutes of any exercise to your day and you will lose weight. It doesn’t matter if you start from zero or add to your existing workout routine, you will get results. How much results? It depends on what you do:

Remember: You don’t have to jump rope 15 minutes in one go. You can divide it so that you jump 5 minutes in the morning, during lunch break and in the evening.

NutriStrategy has a comprehensive list of different types of exercises and how much calories they burn in an hour. Just divide the numbers by four to get the calories you’ll burn in 15 minutes.

How many calories you burn in 15 minutes will depend on several factors including your body weight and the intensity of your workout. These are just examples and the calculations are based on the assumption that one pound of fat is around 3500 calories.

You shouldn’t exercise every day – have at least one day off a week.

Other benefits of exercising 15 minutes more a day

It’s not just about losing weight – exercise 15 minutes more a day a get these bonus benefits as well:

you’ll have so much more energy

you’ll feel better about yourself

you’ll probably feel better about everything else as well!

you’ll burn more calories even after exercising

several health benefits

2. Have green vegetables instead of rice, potato or pasta on one meal a day

Ok, here’s another small thing you can change:

If you’re used to having starchy potatoes, pasta or rice on both lunch and dinner, try having a huge salad on one of those meals instead.

Make a salad with olive oil balsamic vinegar dressing. Add lettuce and other leafy greens (rocket is my favorite), cucumber, bell peppers and onions – there are so many ingredients you can choose from.

A huge salad with a little bit of olive oil based dressing is about 120 calories. Here’s what changes you can expect:

Other benefits of having a salad instead of starchy carbohydrates

Here are some other benefits that you’ll gain if you have a salad with olive oil dressing instead of your favorite carbohydrates:

you need to get your vitamins and antioxidants – having a big salad with different colors and textures gives you just that

you will feel full but lighter, not stuffed

you’ll get healthy fats from olive oil

your stomach will probably “function” much better

3. Learn to drink your coffee or tea without sugar or leave out sugary drinks and have water instead

And here’s the third small change you can make in order to lose weight:

Get rid of sugary drinks.

My boyfriend had to drink his coffee black without sugar when we did Whole30 (more about Whole30) and even though it was difficult in the beginning he still drinks his coffee without sugar or other sweeteners!

Want to know what you’ll gain from this? Here you are:

Now those calculations are made based on having just one of those drinks a day. If you drink 4 cups of coffee a day you can multiply the numbers above by four 🙂

These are very difficult changes to make but as you can see, giving up soda can give you amazing results.